Swearer: Good guys with guns are obvious :: 08/18/2023

Recently, the Kansas City Star ran an op-ed that was vehemently anti-gun. That’s not overly surprising, of course, because most in the media despise guns and gun ownership, even if some of them have one for personal protection.

In this one, the writer makes some pretty bizarre claims.

Over at the Daily Signal, which is owned by The Heritage Foundation, Amy Swearer was unamused by the assertions the author made. You should go and read it at the link below.

One of the assertions is that it’s really difficult to tell the difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with one. Swearer was even less amused by that one.

In fact, she smacked them down hard.

In a recent opinion piece in The Kansas City Star, sociology professor and military veteran Doug McGaw argues that the Second Amendment is “a relic of the 18th century” that needs to be repealed.

…

Throughout the piece, McGaw dismisses any notion that the right to keep and bear arms has a role in securing the rights of peaceable Americans today. He not only thumbs his nose at the premise that “good guys with guns” are a solution to “bad guys with guns,” but flippantly suggests that there is little difference between the two.

“I assume that the good guys will be the ones in the white hats?” McGaw asks. “Otherwise, who can tell which is the good guy?”

This is silly, of course. It’s abundantly clear that the right to armed self-defense is just as important today as it was in 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified.

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

Swearer then notes that the Daily Signal published a lot of self-defense stories and then lists a number from just July.

She then notes that we don’t need different colored hats to tell the difference, and she’s right.

Oh, the glib “white hates” comment was intended to be witty, but McGaw just came off like a pompous windbag there.

The good guy with a gun is pretty easy to differentiate from the bad guy. They’re not the ones trying to knock over a liquor store or shoot up a movie theater or church.

They’re the ones fighting back.

McGaw’s entire premise, which Swearer knocked down at every turn, is that somehow the Second Amendment is wrong for this day and age.

He’s entitled to his opinion, of course. People have a fundamental right to be wrong, and he’s clearly exercising the hell out of that right. They also have a right to show the world how wrong they are on the pages of any newspaper that wishes to publicize how wrong they are.

But both Swearer and I have the right to point out how stupid their arguments are, especially when they try to get glib on a subject they clearly don’t know enough about.

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/08/16/good-guys-with-guns-4-n73747